


I Will Look for You in Every Lifetime (and love you there)

by SouthernBird



Category: Rockman X | Mega Man X, Rockman | Mega Man - All Media Types
Genre: A Compilation of the Million of AU Ideas that Run in My Head, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Animal Death, Character Death, Do Not Expect Any Historical Accuracy, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/F, Fallen Angel!Zero, Fantasy AU, Freeform, Genderbend, Haunting, Human AU, Hunting for Survival, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Death, Implied Human Experimentation, Implied Sexual Content, Implied Violence, Loose Take on Historical References, M/M, Name Changes, No Editing Because When Have I Ever Done That Before?, Nun!X, Other Characters are Mentioned and Tagged as They Appear, Period Pieces, Religious Conflict, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Romance, Southern Gothic AU, Tags Will Expand as Chapters are Added, Thoughts of Death and Grandeur, Unfortunate Implications, Viking AU, War, X is Lady Maria lol, Zero Could Be Omega As Well Apparently, bloodborne au, dark au, just let these two be happy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:33:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26384197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernBird/pseuds/SouthernBird
Summary: A collection of AUs surrounding the idea of reincarnation-- or as much in the realm of reincarnation as two androids (and possibly their friends) can have.
Relationships: X/Zero (Rockman)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27





	1. Laundry Day [Viking AU]

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from a quote by Kamand Kojouri and this idea comes from the many discussions and personal interests that I apply to MM as a whole. Also, just to forewarn, there will be name changes throughout these stories but they will be indicated if they are less than obvious. Names are, of course, chosen carefully and are hopefully, for the most part, accurate (the history lesson is nonexistent though). 
> 
> Zero - Sigfrid
> 
> X - Aelfward

The dewdrop mornings of summer’s first rise are a fond sight of periwinkle seas and cream ship clouds abound. This dawn is no different, quiet save for the soft murmurs of waking livestock and lofty birdsong as he sets about to at least get on his greatest chore of the day.

Beside him, a great beast grumbles in disagreement to the chill at his side before turning right over to huff back to sleep. He leaves his bedmate there, quietly working throughout the home to dress and to fetch his few needs to achieve some satisfaction with what he intends to have done before it is time for their first meal. Despite his quick albeit muted meandering, fur rolls along his ankle, prompting him to stop long enough to feed some meat scraps to his ancient grump of a fat feline, settling only to scratch him behind the ears. With his other beast content, he leaves them be, smoothing his palms over his trousers with an air of reluctance.

Even as he approaches the large woven basket, his joints ache for laundry day is about as fun as walking barefoot through coal and fire. It is, however, a thoughtless task that will drag his thoughts away from the periling inevitable that lays him sleepless well into the nights. 

Nonetheless, once the crops are sewn and the fences are mended, the seas will sing her siren song for his still slumbering bedmate to guide him over the currents to his next voyage far away from their little farm. He himself is a treasure— his lover’s words, not his own— found on the shorelines of his homeland in what seems like a lifetime ago. Perhaps his fate was sealed when he dared to gaze up to the stars one lonely, terrifying night to ask when something would come to give him hope.

What he last expected was the masts of longships rising like shadow and specter in the horizon, heads of dragons parted the tides to bring that hope right to the sands and the dirts where he called birthright.

—Though, before his grand attempt at cleaning a pile of filthy linens, he ought to feed the poor horses and the poor oxen or else their routing cries will stir up too much ruckus and one sleep-deprived beast of a lover is one he is not in need of this day. Granted, this healer by trade can only stay reluctant so long. After all, there is only so much feed to put out and only so many heads to pet, and while he may curse it, that basket still sits at the head of the trail into the woods.

With a heavy, relenting sigh, he drags that basket down a ways to the creek that babbles and twists through the wooded grove right near the farm. Pleased to see that his drying branches are intact after the thunderstorm from nights passed, he finds more satisfaction in dropping the basket to the ground with a triumphant grunt; now comes his second least favorite labor: the actual scrubbing of their clothes.

It is hardly too rough a job, but always consumes more time than thought and his mind wanders down the creek to the river to the inlets and the ocean to swim across the waves and wonder what life is like back on his birth lands. Are the people he was healing and tending to well after the settlement was rebuilt? Are the monasteries still trembling and nearing remise over their walls desecrated with raiding heathens plundering for holy ornaments to trade? Is there someone in a village distances away that will catch certain blue eyes and be swooned away to the farm, only to meet with someone who lets the stars guide his heart?

A pair of trousers plops into the mud as he sighs, brow creased with that ever fretful worry that gnaws and aches away at his ribs every time the talks of summer sailings come to his ears once again. He despises them, loathes them entirely, if just for the simple matter that in some fashion, they will take away the man whose hand he took when a blade nicked too close to his throat.

The trousers will have to be rewashed, and he scolds himself as he picks them right up to wash them right down again despite the ache in his elbows and hands. This damned work is far too much for him at times, much preferring drying herbs for salves and oils, but it needs doing though his mind races and rolls across hillsides and valley lows. He wants something to grasp, no, needs it, needs to cling to something that eases grinding teeth and tense knuckles. His breath rattles in his lungs, struggles featherlike and desperate to escape away from all of this. 

Then, a bird sings, simper sweet, and a note drifts from his throat, then another, until the notes pour from his lips in a lullaby he has not heard since his seventh autumn. Taut nerves loosen their knots to sink down, down, down until he is mindlessly washing the butcher stains from a poor boar that they have fed on for several meals, the tune on his song consolatory all the while.

Peeking golden sunlight shines through the leaves of swaying trees bending to the will of a tepid estival breeze, and for a moment, the cacophony of his anxieties have all fluttered on whispers of winds leaving this little grove irenic. He may be accomplished sooner rather than later at this rate, already halfway through the grueling mass of clothes, until a twig snaps behind him to allude to another presence.

He hardly pays it any mind; the boots tread along the creekside in quiet approach and though his doe heart flutters in his ribs as the first touch comes, the embrace suddenly washes through him metal bitter and fire sharp. Screams flood his ears and wood spark burns behind his eyes.

_“Too pretty to let die,” husks at his ear, teeth at the lobe and lust on the brim, “too pretty not to have for myself.”_

A raven cries in the distance as the water pools cool along his calves, and the nightmare bobbles in dusty froths down the stream.

“My, what do I find on my morning walk but a little bluebird washing away,” comes the croon to his ear, arms encircling his waist to drag him right back from his dutiful work, “when he should have been at home in my warm bed?”

His lover’s shirt falls from his fingers as those arms, girded with muscle woven from plow and sword, are suddenly a transfixing sight that regards his attention. To tease, he traces a tattoo that slithers up and along a firm forearm until a bearded kiss presses to his neck. A sigh flows from him, and any thought of what once was home fades into the ash of cedar fire as he drifts back into the embrace.

Strangely enough, that then feels like hearth and home.

The beast rumbles from behind and kisses along the vein of his neck before purring along the length of it, “answer me, little blue jay.”

“I simply thought you liked your clothes washed,” he huffs back, reaching to grab the shirt before he is pulled right back. Ah, his lover is in _that_ kind of mood today.

The voyage must be far sooner than he had dreaded, floating along the cusp of a fortnight, if he is fortunate.

It causes him to tremble, a webbing of frost along his veins as all the horrid possibilities churn and mull inside his head, all the ways that he would come to know that this man who saved his life would never come home to their bucolic farmland. It is far from a sharp stab, but more a festering laceration that he has scratched at again and again when winter’s icy shade melts into warmer sunshines.

Still, curiosity abides him no favors— “when will you first sail, Sigfrid…?”

“Hush,” is pressed against his shoulder, arms corded with iron tightening just a bit more to hold him closer. Eyes as green as the leaves that shelter them from prying sight regard the wolves that run and bite amongst an expanse of runes and of skin. “Let us finish this damned chore of yours.”

The warmth slides away, and golden braids and ocean eyes fill his gaze thus his heart swells at it all, at that proud jaw and that charming grin, at the crease along those eyes and the love that bleeds from this Samson of a man. The pause of utter adoration stirs a short laugh, and the raider shakes his head in amusement of it all. “Have I charmed you, my Aelfward?”

“Charmed,” he lightly chides as he pushes a water-sopped shirt into the other’s hold, “is hardly the word I would use, you oaf.”

Said oaf gasps light, hand to his heart to feign the methodical stab left by half-chiding words, “you wound your oaf, little bird. Your words are as sharp as the blade of a knife.”

Aelfward’s eyes level with blues so depthless and so clear that his breath is caught in a web of wordless pause and the idea of being charmed rears uproarious and daunting as the raider laughs light and warm. It is a low rumble of a sound, like thunder rolls over the hills at the peak of afternoon’s heat, like crackles of fire as the embers smolder as the furs and quilts beckon. In all his regrets, he adores this raider, this pillager of treasures and of lands, who is so proud of the trinkets he finds to bring home.

And on the eve of the harvests, when the longships return, Aelfward will fall terribly deep in love again, will touch the creases of a grin wide with victory with his fingertips just so he can relearn all the lines and shadows again. Or, rather, he will be given a sword and shield with mournful utterances of endeavors gone horribly wrong, and the lands he came to settle will feel too vast yet too small all at once.

The overwhelming audacity of the world trying to steal away what small morsel of happiness he has hidden away in the palms of his worn hands is more a swipe of sickle along wheatgrass.

He must have been too silent for far too long as knuckles marred with creek water touch along his cheek before a great palm cups his cheek. The raider thumbs along his bottom lip, brow furrowed as he gazes upon him for some inquisition of the secrets he has yet to be told.

“You think too much,” and it perhaps is true, but one of them must, “the way you always worry saddens me.”

_As sure as he is that he might want brutish death far more than the slow ache of this man’s intentions, there comes a skirmish from behind— and the weight of the invaders falls away. His eyes, a trembling green that glows emerald gold in the fires catch sky blue, and there is something safe in the gaze. Arms of corded iron gather him close and a cloak of fur falls over his shoulders. There, sanctuary is a brimming wondrous thought as he settles in, the scent of salt air and pine musk heady and calming as the two rival raids fall into a scuffle._

_He knows then that he would follow this brutish savior from wayward snowcapped lands to the ship at will, and then to his bed. If fate would ever permit, perhaps, then, he would possibly go with this man to the grave. Yes, that he is sure._

“And you seem incapable of it,” comes his chiding tone, but there is a feebleness that cracks along his fragile heart that pines for days when the seas no longer call his lover across her curving waves to treasures abound. It would do them both well, at least, to have the comfort of this tranquility found on their humble farm.

Tension reeks in sparking cue stirring a chill along his skin as the pregnant pause eats away at their banter. Blue eyes regard him strangely, brimming with some glossing emotion that causes the brunet to turn away. His curls falls into his eyes— better to hide the shadows of fears away— as the last of the laundry is nearly washed and this chore can be done for yet another day.

He hardly makes three steps to hang the last of the washed clothes, the basket plucked right from his hands by his raider. He is nearly at a loss as a man seemingly forged by the same dwarves that forged Thor’s hammer carefully drapes linens and trousers across the branches as though any more effort will splinter the tree in half. Aelfward should just thank him, leave it be and give the blond his right and due, but when Sigfrid turns back to the other, he looks aged, time creasing its gnarl-knuckled touch along his brow. Ten, no, thirty years have crept along his face, wrinkled him into some vessel of tired old wisdom that burdens his shoulders so terribly that they slope down towards the dirts of the earth.

“Dearest,” whispers out between his parted lips, and all that is within him urges him forward to cup that bearded jaw, to smooth away the ages back into his raider’s face so that the years not sweep him into the grave too soon. The words fall quiet, all of his concerns and his quakes deafening into a tremble as those same eyes that ensnared him that night so long ago bore into his very soul.

Speak to me, he nearly begs, but everything seizes like a knot of the rope as the end of a sail; tell me not to worry, he nearly cries, but nothing murmurs forth, trapped in the bow of his hesitations. His lover, though, is a merciful oaf, tender in all the opposites presumed of him as his till-weathered hands take Aelfward’s into his own, thumbs tracing over palm lines in reverence.

“I worry,” the taller of them speaks, voice a quivering rumble, “I worry more than I ever thought I would before…”

What anxieties crept along his spine, the same that nipped and scratched at his nerves, abruptly yield along their path at such admission.

“Before I found you, I used to pray for the things I thought I needed. For many summers, I would take the best of my flocks and my harvests to the gods so that I could give my pleas. Strength for battle, wisdom for war… perhaps a lovely bird to warm my bed—.”

Aelfward cannot restrain the snort that sniff from his throat, but it hardly deters Sigfrid.

“—And blessed me they have, but cursed me all the same with fear that is bone deep.”

Distantly, a light breeze that plays along the tune of bird chirp while rustling airy paths through the splendrous leaves of summer’s foliage. The once Saxon hardly notices, more inclined to stare in some gobsmacked awe that this proud warrior of shield and sword would ever utter even the idea that he was intimate with fear’s threadbare hand. This man has endured cuts from axe and point of spear, has waded through torrential storms that circled the fleet of longships, has laid his fellow raider down— fear should be a stranger.

At the silence corded around Aelfward’s throat, Sigfrid sighs, still holding his lover’s hands as though they were delicate relics of sanctimony unearthed from the roots of an ash tree.

A croak of a sound, but the healer tries despite the sand and nettle that grind in his voice, “you have no fear.”

“Oh, I fear. I fear in ways that never struck me down before,” Sigfrid laughs, but the humor is baseless, stagnantly bland, as he still traces adoring lines over his lover’s palm, “I have started to fear the oceans, the sickly seasons… the day when I cannot return to you.”

Aelfward nearly whispers desperately for this raiding oaf to never speak of such things, but his tongue is caught in an iron snare that hangs heady in his mouth. He wants to say so many things, the plethoras of thoughts that have plagued him infinitesimally blinking and shaking like stars swept under the weight of a cosmic undertow, but nothing comes. Instead, he can snatch his hands away to drag this man down to press their lips together and just let them _be_ for however he prefers.

The moments eke pass in slow monotones even after they part, foreheads pressed together in some tempered hope that they could remain there until the end of days, until the great fire comes to the halls of the Aesir so that all that is known will become ash. Aelfward shudders, hands falling to touch over his lover’s heart, praying silently that some deity have pity upon them, to leave them be until the stars fade from moonlight and the sun corrodes into a darkened stone in the sky.

Hands, worn by the hilt of a sword and leather of horse rein, enfold his as he finds the soothing thrum of the raider’s heart steady and true. They are want for nothings souls too intwined with another to care about the world beyond the wooded glen, too wrapped around each other to bid the thoughts of inevitable gloom and melancholy any heed. All those lovelorn worries scatter like dandelions blown by the children of their village at the soft rumble from the other, and nothing could please him more.

“Do you feel it?” Sigfrid whispers along the bow of his lips, ends of his beard tickling at delicate flesh, “do you feel the drum beat?”

“I do,” he admits whisper light, his entire being focused solely on that steady _thump, thump_ that is ever so loyal underneath his palms. The bristles brush along his chin as he is gifted another tender kiss, an act that leaves him near swooning in delight.

A chuckle, more or less at his doe-eyed adoration glowing candidly, and there is nothing short with how gentle Aelfward is treated by this man, “this heart of mine beats only for you, and will until my last, lowly breath.”

Behind closed eyes, the brunet nearly sees red at such reasoning, see the crackling embers of fire hot and engulfing as water tides lap at the kindling and as storms threaten to dampen out the flame. There is an echo of rumbling force that claps streaks of cold light through the clouds, and Aelfward wants to drown, to sink below the murky surface as the shadows of oars and ships break the sun’s light, if it only means he will never know the loss his lover speaks of.

The brevity of the weight drags down his shoulders all the same, but he cannot bear to take away his hands from the firm planes of this man’s chest; still, he can muster just a smidgeon of something to tick away at least a morsel of heaviness, “that is until you find another fair lad on your travels?”

Something icy and glinting overtakes the blues of warrior’s gaze, steels them so briskly that Aelfward is drenched with worry that his words are taken too seriously. His bones feel brittle, husked with snow and permafrost, frostbit and corroded as arms take him closer. He is but a shell under those eyes, still as prey in the sight of an arrow quick.

Yet, the tension shatters into scattering black flocks, and he is kissed once, then twice, thrice more until the man’s warmth thaws away the shivering tomes that threatened to overtake his small frame. During it all, he craves that drumbeat beneath his palms, this low thud that is a testament to the life that breathes within his partner’s breast.

“I am quite content with this little blue jay,” the raider croons, fingers hitching up into his curls to wrap a lock around his knuckle, “if he will always have me.”

“Regrettably, he will,” yet his voice lacks malice, lacks all the ember of bitterness that should have been kindled that day the pillage rained fire and arrow on the rooftops. It is a simple matter, all perfectly and succinctly due to a turn of hand that found him in the blistering path of one Norseman, somehow leaving him content to smile and draw his fingertips over a crow’s feet grin.

“Until the end of my days as well.”

And the day of the voyage will come soon enough, when the oars push off from the beaches and Aelfward is fraught with nerves that never simmer down from their enduring stress. He will care for the farm and livestock, he will hold his sweet grumpy cat Cain close by the fires, and wait as a yearning lover would. The sails will breach the horizon one sunrise, and Sigfrid will be home again, eager as a fox to tell all of his tales over meat and mead in the grand halls. Oh, how boastful he will be as he rouses the village folk, fretting over the details of his greatest journey across the sea’s divide yet.

Until then, the warrior takes up the laundry basket, still a gentle beast in waiting, kindly offering his hand to his dearest one that waits just steps away. With a tender smile alight with morning dew, the healer takes it, threading their fingers together like a web of Wyrd, as they both walk side by side down the fateful trail that winds up to their farm.

—

The dewdrop mornings of summer’s first rise are a fond sight of lilac veils and tangerine sails as green eyes awaken at the chirp of an early alarm: 0630. It is time to awaken for the day and greet it with soft gratitude.

X sits up as the recharge capsule hisses open, yawning as he is apt to do to feel a little more than just a sentient being comprised of metal and of wire. He might even stretch his arms, wishing to feel the pop of joints and stretch of spine, but he built without need so the motion is hollowing. Regardless, it is a routine, and there is nothing more comforting than doing what comes conversant, even if it a silly attribute that makes him perceived strangely amongst his fellows.

Today, though, comes like the lightest of cracks of his normal status and he cannot quite place his finger on anything that would contribute to such a state.

With a drop of his arms, X sits there in the pod, rolling his shoulders to gauge what this emptiness that parades within his chest. There is a stillness in his room that draws him into silence, his gaze flitting around his small room as though he should be expecting something unusual, something out of turn from the night prior before he laid down to rest.

Somehow, the ambiance is familiar yet paradoxical, leaving him wondering if he is truly within his own skin as everything just seems _off_. Even after he clears a system check, the Hunter swears he can smell traces of sea salt and ash tree, but for all he knows, he could be just experiencing a glitch with his olfactory sensors. Shame, as he would rather avoid spending too much time in the Med Bay just for some rudimentary and inconclusive test results.

Despite himself, the First nearly hears the roar of bonfire clap and the laugh of a beast that kisses far too deep and loves far too much. X shudders, fingers drawing over his palms as though lines would be there to touch. He misses, but he hardly can fathom what for.

So, he merely stands, as time is a delicate blessing that he has wasted already too much of, a note of a song on his lips as he makes his way out into a world far less comforting than creekside and farmland of bucolic old where a sweet beast lies in wait for him to come back home.


	2. Liberas impii mi sanguine [Bloodborne AU I]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A corpse…” whispers hot and toxic against his chin, “should be left well alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy early birthday to blue boy. I hope Zero as a hunter giving you heart eyes is a sufficient present.

The grand doors creak, the hinges moaning upon its rusted swing in a foreboding cry as an unfortunate Paleblood pushes his way into the highest precipice of what has been a swirling gilded hell. _Turn back_ , it could say, _turn yet away,_ but the goading bell will toll sooner than he would care for and the night’s hunt will be but a lifetime away. He proceeds without fear, drawing his cloak closer as he proceeds into the mausoleum of the Clocktower; the lumenwood at his back swaying in a high breeze is the only witness to his path onward.

The room is too sparse for his liking, filled with candles aflame and wooden boards that protest with his steps further in. What draws this hunter’s gaze, sharp and azure, is a magnificent clock that is inlaid in the wall before him with runes etched the lack-lustrous face and a strangely stopped dial. Some rune are known, having found them throughout the piles in the alleys and corners of Yharnam and beyond, but others are novel and his nearly longs to learn them. He disregards the Clock for just a second more to look before he finds—.

A corpse, it seems, is hunched over in a winged-back chair that sits facing towards the doors as though to play guard to whatever enigmas the hands of the Astral Clock holds hidden. He would think quite little of it, but the nightmare has warped and has crystallized man and woman into hideous, writhing things that are from a book well-noted from, of course, nightmares. One cold body, sitting paused just as the Clock, is hardly anything that would boil his skin or shiver his spine.

Curiosity, though, guides the hunter further, as it is simply curious to what could be found at the precipice of the Research Hall. Each step echoes, the sound reverberating along the rafters and into his chest, his heart beating twice as hard as some sense of instinct tells him to _run._

Run he does not, still regarding the sitting figure with some motivation to see it closer. And, closer he is when he stands before the chair, noting the wine goblet and broken glass on the table just to his left. Another drifting search throughout the room brings to attention the petals of lumenflowers scattered amongst the cracked boards, and a sense of somberness rings hollow in his ribs.

This place is a grave, an internment for this one old hunter that he has perhaps desecrated with his very being there. He will have to ask for forgiveness when it might be found, but not then, not there. There is still so much night to bleed into his skull before the bell rings true, rings above in this dim would-be belfry, so that eyes, _eyes_ , would sear into his very cerebral cage and give him the wisdom of the old giants of the cosmos.

But, he is too deep in this quandary, too buzzed on the relishing premise of scrapping across the dirt and oil to find why this place is near damn infested with writhing, crying once-creatures that speak of a name holy on their tongues. The Church has left them all wrapped with leather bonds and chain, left these failures to a lack of cognizance. Even the most seemingly rational of these poor souls, Alya, strapped to her chair alone in a room of gurneys and bloodless vials, had sticky sounds that paraded about as she asked benignant for brain fluids.

If he were a praying man, he would hope that the death incurred by her baptism in that murky, mushy fluid was less melting and more painless.

Amongst the gloom of this Clocktower, the moon-scented hunter might have turned away, finding disappoint lacing through his veins at nothing to be found but yet another death, but something glints in the tepid light that bleeds through the Clock. Dusty light glimmers along a simple brooch that is nestled atop blood-stained frills, and it beguiles him, entices the hunter with hair of gold and eyes of seas deep to lean close to this poor dead thing and reach out.

_“Climb the Astral Clocktower, and kill Xavier. He hides the real secret.”_

_Alya’s gentle, grateful voice flutters in the air, her sighs wistful and true as he watches her frail form fall limp within her bonds, “take this charm— Master Xavier gave it to me.”_

And the forthright orders from a harrowed man and the sweet relishing of a dead woman echo too late, something dangerous rising from the chair when a hand takes his arm, jerking the Paleblood closer to meet the face of something— no— someone too familiarly subliminal that it frays he idiotic courage that has veiled across his shoulders this whole night.

“A corpse…” whispers hot and toxic against his chin, “should be left well alone.”

And what is pretty face on the doll in the dream is sallowed on this old hunter as this one that the groveling miscreants of the research halls below clawed out and begged for has war and grief etched along his frown and his brow. Nothing short of regret shades what was once perhaps a smile of sunlight and of hope, and it is a saddening realization that these blood-worshipping clerics have indeed victims by the pile.

Still, this new hunter’s heart is struck, a thousand daggers piercing into flesh and sanguine and all for what? He has befouled beast abound— and all for what? To fall to his knees and offer his neck to the master of this Hall, this Master Xavier of this Astral Clocktower?

Rather, foolishly, he falls a little in love with death at first sight while fear’s gnarled fingers ensnares him coldly, beckons him with whispering needs to draw back as he realizes just how threatening this corpse can be. He wants to be closer; he wishes he had left the corpse well alone indeed. That, although a deafening, wandering thought, fades with the dust motes. A desire wells within his chest, soaking and sloshing about in rapturous decree as he craves not the bite of blade but the touch of the bow to lips fair.

His silent adoration is hardly noted by this once soldier of the Church, and each step forward is significant, meaningful, intent so mournfully dark in those enrapturing eyes, verdant less than vibrant in this gloomy once resting place. That face, the same that greets him kindly with sweet song of “good hunter,” is still porcelain firm yet battle weary.

This old hunter means to kill him in this very sanctimony of candlelight and secrets where only this lonely Clock will peer upon the act.

And should he be so bold to offer his miserable vein to allow the deep cut the old hunter surely desires? He doubts, yet postures himself, the grip on his pistol tight. To fall now would be a terrible circumstance as the waves of looming lakes lap in his mind and yes, dear patient, he can hear the water, can hear it so loud it nearly roars like tides in his skull. He tires of it so, wants the thud of power to pound in his ears above the water drips instead as he knows it as intimately as the sword that rests on his back. Beastliness is far more his liking, a forte of sorts when plunging sword into the flesh of monsters too gone in their bloodlust to salvage.

But, is he not close to the calls of the other side where lingers in the air the truth of all this miserable wading?

Xaiver’s voice is honeyed gray as though to answer such inquiry; “oh, I know very well how the secrets beckon so sweetly.” 

_Splish, splash, splish, splash,_ and the water floods and the currents drown in an adrenaline desire to pass by this doll-like predator, to see what his beloved blade might sing for across a sprawling lake of elusive endlessness. It is unfortunate then that this siren with ethereal tune would stand so divinely defiant between the Paleblood and victory, heeding every call to arms to diligently oppose this interloper.

A life for a life, blade to blade, is all that will come of this, though his heart aches at it all.

“Only an honest death will cure you now.”

Wistful and tired, the hunter draws the sword from his back, a hefty relic bathed in the arcane glow of moonlight that once was gripped by a mighty Agis of spartans that fell into deranged beast-hood. The green radiance is eerily calming, a lukewarm heat that thaws just the slightest of frost from the pallid gaze that bores into his very soul.

“Liberate you from your wild curiosity.”

In retaliation so assured, the Rakuyo is halved with a clean clack, and something like thunder trembles through the very wood as the Clocktower bell rings slow and alluring. Then, it all bends and it all bleeds, blearing into the warm mottled lights that drift along this sanctuary.

—

“… _Z? Z, are you functioning right? Are on you on the fritz? Dude.”_

It is akin to taking that first breath once the surface is breached, but it is hardly salty though bitterly brined on the tip of his tongue. The taste is acrid and what is worse is that everything shifts back into place like puzzle pieces falling right on the board yet his core simmers with scenes of what must be a glitch.

Well, perhaps, glitch is an inaccurate term of preference, as the nights and days of his life have culminated into more skeptical endeavor rather than pure logical routine as of late. His recharges are plagued with what feels as close to longing as the hunter can imagine, always having a hollow pit in his systems that he cannot dig through long enough to determine any cause or solution. It might be perilous to invade his own processors so aggressively, but these images that smear into his circuits as of late are detrimental to his function.

It makes it all the more curious that X— and others— are found in some way within the confines of these anachronistic visions.

Due to his lack of reply, Axl’s eyebrows raise further as he leans closer, hand waving in front of Zero’s face to draw him right back out from his internal conundrums. “Hey— no doing that weird… whatever you just did ever again. Okay? Freaked me out. Do you even remember what I was talking about?”

Zero grunts, sitting up straighter in his seat as he regards Axl with a piercing glare, “Whatever you think is imperative to retrieve for X’s ‘birthday,’— but not one damn word. I am functioning properly.”

The threat cuts tundra-cold and lingers in the air like a specter’s knife.

“Roger, roger!”

And it should all fade from there, dissipate into nothingness, but as Zero stands with Axl to leave the canteen to return to the head of command, he cannot help but think he sees the petals of lumenflowers guide his way down the corridors to where he belongs, side by side with a hunter of old full of all his regrets and his confessions that are kept far too close to his breast.


	3. Of Birdcages [Dark!Fantasy AU]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “To take you by my side,” the victorious lion prevails, sweeping his arms around the throne room where the emblem of Light hands in velvet blues, “and keep you there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated: 9/28/2020
> 
> I had every intention of keeping this list of AUs quite tender, but this idea sparked, and I suppose this is more Omega/X more than anything. The fantasy world is one a friend and me built over the course of a year or so, and I like pulling it out when I need it for such things-- and yes, their kingdoms are named after constellations.

Acrid is the scent of burning flesh and petulant are the cries of the market and homestead that had lied beneath the shade of the capitol’s stronghold. This great bastion of Lyran greatness, the very monolith that had stood as a shining testament to this small island’s prestige and safety, would now fall at the very hands of a too well-armed invasion.

He could laugh, really, this son of beast, this man that had picked up axe and sword when he could barely walk and cast them aside when he found his hands far better weapons. Still, he had to learn the art of a warrior, earn the respect of a soldier, only to find himself the grandest of generals the wayward kingdom of Ursa could have ever desired. He has been told across the crackling dance of campfire that he was surely carved and formed in the red clays by a lioness spirit for his own soul was far too vicious even for his brothers in arms.

Zeno, stands tall at the market square, his leathers and furs stained and bloodied with the sinew and skin of lesser foes that could hardly move at the sight of Ursa’s great berserker. For such remarked armed warriors, these Lyrans that were supposedly forged iron over the fires of discipline, they could no more tremble and quake within their knees at the sight of a lion man that stood with the head of the eldest prince in one hand, his sword in the other.

It was nearly regrettable how easily the eldest of the Light heirs had perished, this young man barely king after an ailing father’s passing from a struck-true arrow to the heart when he had no right to stand before his first rank of defense. The blow had been struck between a short scuffle, all accruing at the end of obscenities in native tongue and the clash of steel against boastful shield, the plummeting quake of sword edge through bone a clean fatal gash.

The hazy battlefield had quietened then, an ominous and hollowing hum of silence deafening upon the ears of the last of the isle’s armies before raucous roars of exultation. There, amongst the weeds and the wild plains, laid head and astral crown, both dull in all manner until Zeno chose to take the head, leaving the crown to be. None of his men would dare pick up a corpse’s crown, none would dare to carry a thing so besmirched, so useless, while their general carried the truest token of their victory.

His feet have tread across the islet, the soles of his boots digging deep his mark and his path in winding march across rolling hills and around depthless lochs. Perilous could be no account for him and his fellow men-at-arms as no thatched roof village nor portcullis-barred town could resist the onslaught of savage conquest. Fire would lick the sky, smoke would billow and stride against the stars, and screams of prey would harmonize cacophony well into the dawn of horrid defeat.

For all the scars and all the death, for all the poor bastards that were fallen by a sling of his sword, the lion prowls forth, just right there on the cusp of his pedestal where ambrosia sweet and divine waits. To think of how this could have never come to pass, how it should have been a trick or two less had the apple of his eye had just come along when the Ursan boasted of marriage.

Birds, for all their pretty frocks and lovely eyes, are far too prideful he finds, and war was just the price to pay for such offense.

Yet, here it is, the stairwell that ascended the principal spire that rose to the glorious heavens, and his heart is light, his hands free, as somewhere along the way he dropped the head of the would-be king. Oh, maybe it was folly to do so, but between crossing depthless lochs, rolling hills, and lifting portcullises, his care for such dead weight could hardly surmount to an ounce. No, what delights his heart in palpitations abound lies skyward, and thus he climbs.

Though, as the lion has the time to do, he recalls the twins. Ah, yes, the twins, the two middle siblings, lay somewhere beyond his gaze, somewhere amongst the corpses of enemy and countrymen whom were scattered like petals of sanguine flowers across the rolling hillside. He can hardly recall their names, and is certain those names will be cried into the storm clouds by cursing rebels still clinging to the vestments of frayed royalty, but he remembers a spear and a crossbow and how easily these two fell. It was nearly piteous, the sight of their eyes two pair of sky blues that dimly reflected the fading light of another day, but alas, war is hardly a kind mistress.

No, war is a blind lioness of unbridled fury for justice is no keeper in her house and her hearth. To her, only victor prevails in the whines of her course, and he too shall bask in the lack of it all.

Despite the throw of rampage that would be embarked by his goddess, the berserker was merciful enough to command his men to leave the twins for the crows— and leave them they did, a ruby-clad princess of the spear and a cyan-garbed prince the crossbow. What more could his enemies have asked for? He could have dismembered them same as their elder sibling, could have ground their bones into the dirt and rock so that forever his men and their heirs would walk upon their graves?

Ah, a scent draws him from the wandering thoughts that distract him, and a hint of clove and bergamot cloys at his nose; he is close, so close to the zenith of the ivory tower that stands highest in all of Lyra. It is as tantalizing as it is mellifluous, curling fingertips along his chin to beckon him to the tiptop where the very catalyst of this war sits in wait.

And he is a starved man, feral in his hunger for flesh and justification, ravenous at the mere thought of a song bird siren singing ember-blessed hymns during the carnal nights that will await them whether wanted or not. Rather, he hopes the desires that are molten in his ribs are reciprocated in full, if the smirk across the table months ago should entice him into such fantastical fits of lustful grandeur.

It is all heavy echoes of his footsteps through the stairwell until the landing comes to a finely dressed corridor, and the general snorts, merely offended at the defenses that have come to thwart his cause.Truly, this is it, as all that mockingly stands in his way are two pitiful attempts at knighthood and sumptuous doors inscribed and carved deep with Lyra's nascence story.

How feeble the sight, but he inhales deep, and that smells coyly evokes the beast to growl.

“Open the doors,” bellows out from his throat as he stands tall before the last shield that has barred him from his greatest reward, the most lovely of treasure this isle could ever offer to a berserker, “open them or I will break them down with your skulls.”

And, of course, as all weaker fools do, the two soldiers tarry about with shaking hands to unlock the oak doors adorned with lyre, shield, and bow, until the hinges grunt and swing, and the doors reveal the most lovely of sights. The conqueror is within the threshold of a cage of the last heir’s choosing, so he proceeds with caution unlike his own instincts. War is easy, a trivial affair where the victor can rise from the dust of battle through sheer will alone, but this little bird is another affair entirely.

“… You really did come for me.”

There he is, that little prince, the youngest of the Light family and possibly the most cunning, sitting upon his father’s throne. Barely nineteen autumns and yet proud and diligent, possessing eyes of sceptered green and an intelligence hardly to be underestimated if his cartography alone is taken into high account. Were the general less than knowledgeable of this last of the Lyran line, he would perhaps laugh at the bow in the prince’s hand as such silly tools are meant for the weathered hands of true fighters, meant for gilded archers in the flanks to rain arrows upon the enemy lines.

Ah, but the Ursan is hardly so unwise to presume as such, especially when he knows this prince could set the kingdoms of the now-defunct alliance aflame with his ideas of equality, his visions of progress. There is a moment to ponder if the prince was cast aside from the war table where his brothers and sister gathered with their most respected generals to discuss tactic and strategy, leaving their brightest star of wit to instead sit in waiting for when the fires would scorch his bucolic homeland.

Even so, the Lyran’s vehemence shades intoxicating in those verdant eyes, yet Zeno happens to notice the slightest of slacks along the fletchings, the prince’s fingers loosening just perhaps a quarter of an inch— and it is a surrender all the same, victory to relish that his whims and his slaughters have all surmounted into this pivotal moment.

“I am not swift enough to pull the bow and pierce your heart, and what sword and knife I could have been given to protect was taken for the front lines,” the prince exhales with bitter bite and poison sleek, “you have kept your word and come for me, you brutish lion.”

“To take you by my side,” the victorious lion prevails, sweeping his arms around the throne room where the emblem of Light hands in velvet blues, “and keep you there.”

An offer of his hand, barely wiped off of the grim evidence of the plight he has plagued the isle with, is barely considered. Xavier, reluctant in all ways, refuses it, though his fingers twitch to seemingly want to grasp the fletching of an arrow from his quiver to stab out those blue eyes that regard him with dark fascination.

“’Tis all right,” and with a shift of his weight, Zeno bows before the prince with the flair of a sack of sand while his eyes rove across that prim and proper posture to gaze right into those eyes. Yes, that rage bridled behind stormy tides and whistling winds, that cognition too magnificently profound, and that challenge of _come get me then_ that ensnared him across the swaying lantern light in what seems so long ago still boils emerald even then.

What a poor having wanted to play chess with a brute that just simply took a sword to cleave his way into the villages and the armaments. The whole of it seems horridly unfair, the prince barely having one advantage to play to make all the obstacles set before the Ursan invasion just the bit difficult. The pawns have crumbled, the knights have been crushed, and the king and the rest of his men now fall into the pages of lost history leaving nary a protector for this prince still adorned with his circlet.

Yet, there is thunder in his veins, war drums resounding a beat of steadying satisfaction while he take one of those soft hands into his own, the knuckles tense against his lips as he kisses the skin with all the tenderness a man of blade could muster. This bird is his, all his, his possession and his treasure and his to claim and to mark as he damn well pleases.

The feathers ruffle, and something akin to fear prickles beautifully about the edges of that pretty emerald stare; the lion purrs, pleased, as he whispers promise along untouched skin—.

“I finally have you, little blue bird, and into my cage you will go.”

\--

Something murmurs throughout the chaotic hums that all scribble along his circuit boards, all in hissing demand until something beeps. Clarity then gleams into his processors, calms his gears and his calibrations—X is nearly there, slipping past every obstacle Zero has placed in his way. 

The once Hunter could smirk, so elated, so freed by his now awakened state that invites memories he has never played witness to to enter his databases. He could laugh, but he does not, wanting his reserves as full as possible for what he knows is the inevitable end. It is invigorating what pulses through circuits, not only causing omnipotence but also omniscience, the very state of godhood that is his due right. The world should tremble at his mercy of staying right where he is, waiting… and waiting. 

However, the world is hardly a care; all that matters is a succinct scream that rings high and sweet in his head, over and over in a sickening mantra of purpose. 

  
_This time, you will come to me, willingly, into your birdcage._  



	4. Deam Angus [Lamb of the Goddess - Nun/Demon AU]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ever the dutiful and prudent Sister, aren’t you, my little one?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the most blasphemous thing I have ever written. Cool.

In waning twilight, after all the daily chores and teachings have ceased, she finds herself in the muted solitude of the basilica's gardens where their most prized flowerbeds lie in wait. It is here in this floral sanctuary that she can find solace, can kneel in faithful reprieve and tend to her beloved flowers while her heart hangs heavy between her ribs.

Fractures of sunset gleam through colored glass, spilling forth a resplendent gift of the Goddess whom gave her Daughter’s blood to be shed for all people’s salvation. The mere thought of such sacrifice touches her soul every evening when she looks above to the kindest and most beautiful visage of the Lady of High, gives her the temperance to settle amongst the flower beds and sing to her little blooms. After all, the Goddess created human in Her most wonderful image and gave human the blessings of life’s lovely visions— these flowers are merely testaments to the Goddess' Providence, and thus she is emboldened to tenderly care for them as is her saintly privilege.

First, she waters the amaryllis, a sign of the Goddess' enduring and persistent love. Then bluebells, Her boundless humility and Her loyalty to all who flock to Her. Dahlias, freesias, and hyacinths all witness in radiant grandeur under the sun, the same formed by the Goddess as she had dripped from Her Divinity a molten core to mold into the sky a cycle of perfect day and night.

As a nun of the Church of Her Holy Miracle, Alexandra is blessed and most aware of her circumstance. As the once apothecary and florist of their budding village, her natural inclinations and her most diligent disciplines heralded her for such a sacred duty, and she could never deny his she loves how each bloom seems to perk at her presence. As she loves the Goddess with embers of piety and resilience, she loves how each flower sways in delight at the evening watering as such moments bring a softness to her soul, a gentle squeeze in her ribs. It feels so _right_.

And, of course, she comes to her favorite, the newest addition to the gardens she sown by her own hands; peonies of timid, blushing pinks, a gift from the Goddess for her diligence perhaps. A hum passes between her lips, a hymn passed from the mouths of Seraphs that war and prophesy herald at the beck and call of the Goddess, and it is something of a comfort to her while tending to her prized peonies.

“Ever the dutiful and prudent Sister, aren’t you, my little one?”

The air snaps cold, frigid and unyielding, like winter’s bite has come to cling to her, and the light dims as though the sun has flickered like a lone candle upon an unlit hearth. Alexanda trembles in anticipation, her heart beating rabbit quick while her blood cools. No, not this day, not again— and the wings flutter in her ribcage while panic grips her throat.

“Irony never fails your Goddess, does it? I thought only Sisters pure of body and soul could enter Her Sanctum?”

And the barbed wire smirk that lines the mordant words never fails to linger in the tones of that voice, and she prays so fleeting and so desperately for Her Grace to remove this sacrilegious thing from her presence. Her fingers twine tight, her whispers threadbare, and she prays and pleads until hands cup her own and a body corded with iron presses to her back.

She knows this one too well, far, far too well, knows the curves and braces of crimson-bronzed armor and the sight of torn, misshapen wings that twitch in its shadows. She knows the flame that licks along her soul and she quakes in fear—and in sordid hope, a lamb for the slaughter.

“You will not know me this time, wretch,” Alexandra hisses out as defiant as her sinful heart can manage, but those hands, ash tinged and sanguine stained, are already trailing up her arms to cup her breasts through her habit. Every inch of touch is gentle as a lover, and it should be unbecoming, being violated by this demon queen that smells of smoke and bergamot, but her body whimpers and sighs as molten desire pools between her thighs.

Resolve is a thread she long to make taut in her frantic resolve though her body betrays her, flaying her open to the whims of such hellish presence. Even as she grits her teeth to hold back her soft mewls, thumbs gently circle over her nipples to tease as though to coax her into unblessed submission. Hands desperate for purchase should grip in the skirts of her azure habit, but they are hopelessly reaching for the fallen seraph's knuckles to simply touch along the scars.

The Goddess’ glass visage still stands high and holy above them, but She is instead a vision of rimed disappointment, no longer the warmth that kisses Her children upon each sunrise, no longer the Pinnacle of salvation for Her fruitless flock.

Something dark murmurs against her ear, lips kissing along the shell as the Sister feels the first buttons being undone to expose her flesh she has pledged to Her Grace alone. Thunder pounds in her heart and her soul bids her to flee, to run into the shadows of the basilica’s mighty arches and marble columns so that she may be free of this fallen seraph’s thorn. Her body, however, trembles in sheer delight, as fingertips trail constellations and epitaphs and nails nip over her breasts. She burns, _burns_ with every touch, so needy for every gift of this false love that she would rather step in flame than recall any wants of atonement.

“You say that you will deny me each time, yet you still spread those pretty legs for me… as though She molded you just for me.”

“She would never—,” Alexandra begins in horrified retort for what Goddess is this she worships in song and praise would birth her into this world only to be a slut for this demon? “She would not willingly make one of us your servant, Zara!”

Fingers tease up her breasts and collarbone to take her chin, and Zara in all her prior holy glory turns her head so that blues so sultry and so terrible captivate greens of tantalizing worry. Thumb caressing her jaw, the once pure General of Her Sword inches closer until their lips brush together in perverted matrimony.

Save her, she pleads to deaf ears, as fallen seraphs, especially the greatest of generals, are still lovely in sight and the thought derides all her regrets simultaneously.

“Oh, but She did. Every part of you was formed by Her hands with me in mind… and how better to show my gratitude than to have you for myself?”

Lips touch over her own once more, tender and fruitful, to entice her steeled whims to fray and collapse. Giving in has always come easy, especially once she has been sullied and defiled. She was once untouched, once pure, then she took up the watering of Her flowers in Her Sanctum only for her own petals to be plucked away between heated pleas and lusting praise. To think of it makes her nearly sick, disgusted with how much she burns for more. She is shamed and yet eager at how she desires the Goddess' most sublime of Her disgraced children, how she will bite a cloth by her teeth as she touches herself in the quiet of her room. Always it is the fallen seraph in her fantasies, always her name on end of her muffled begs.

Her skin is always alight with the kindling Zara has scattered in her veins, her voice always thrumming with hope that she is wanted above all else. How piteous Alexandra is, this foolish Sister who smiles just right and lies just so before she finds herself in the arms of sinuous promise.

“ _No_ ,” but the defense lacks grit and the revelation is not lost on Zara must as her grin tilts up, all teeth and sneer. Ah, how awfully possessive that look is, seeking to smite all of this nun of the Goddess' conviction that she derides from faith. But, faith is fleeting when the flesh is weak, the same true when hands push the cross flaps to the side so palms of weathered and burned war can touch supple skin. The corrupted seraph, whose wings still break and singe from the Grand Punishment, kisses her treasured one hard, _no_ , in awful hunger, a feral tinge sharp on her fangs that does nothing to temper the human's lowly lusts.

Alexandra is a fluttering mess, falling apart bit by bit as she is cupped and fondled by the Goddess' once proud and gilded General, and what pours in tomes and tongues from her kiss swollen lips is blasphemous in the presence of Her Holy Name, sinful and degrading yet carnal and _right._ She is tempted, yet she is temptation, a pomegranate hanging low on a fruitful tree to be plucked in iniquity.

“Let me hear you,” is not a sweet nothing pleaded between the breaths of lovers, but a command brimming with sulfur and fire, “I want to hear your confessions, my little one.”

And eyes of verdant splendor, darkened with desirous whim, gazes fleetingly heavenward for her Goddess' Face, to beg for golden mercy, to pray for her poor soul to be salvaged and made sacred again from the pulp and flesh of licentious ruin that is her body. She whispers comforting scripture, murmurs hymnal after hymnal as her skirts are dragged up and her thighs are spread.

Instead of being alight with the ethereal gleam of the Spirit, the Goddess' Face is as dark as a moonless night, the stars even veiled beyond her sight as though everything beautiful and pure has turned its back upon her wanton frame. At this, she crumbles, body and soul, and this woman of bone and of sin falls into the arms of the fallen one to devote her sordid prayers and sweet unholy nothings as copper lanterns glow high from their hangings. She cleaves to her idol like a virgin bride yet moans her moans would prompt a harlot to blush; she encompasses pleasure kindled as her nails cut and dig into battle-worn skin while she is filled with praise from what once sat on High.

 _Hallelujah_ sings rough from her throat and _amen_ burns in her lungs until the zenith snaps—and she is left broken in pieces with only wilted flowers of Her Glory to bear witness to her fall.

——————

“T-Minus five minutes until shutdown, Master X.”

White lights dance above the sealing chamber as human and reploid alike work tirelessly about, tapping away at tablets and consoles that relay the schematics of what is to be a chance at a final resting place. Words cannot seem to creep from his voice box while he watches their labors through the glass, no effervescent speeches of consolation or resolve spewing forth from his mouth to ease the rumbling tides of their anxious hearts. He feels for them, but he feels more for himself, an ache and void worn so deep in his core, and he swears on the grave of an old man he once adored that he is damn tired of digging graves.

Yggdrasil is as ever a comfort to him, her lowest hanging branches displaying vibrant spectrums of data streams that dazzle across her massive trunk. She is the embodiment of his hollowed dreams, a perfect epitome of machine and nature to beguile the people of Neo Arcadia, and he cannot fathom any place else he would wish to be his mausoleum. After all, here he is to sleep and to protect naïve minds from the knowledge of the Dark Elf, to bury into history’s dusted pages her legacy so that the future might once know hope.

No, he is again lying to himself, letting his ambitions of peace and inclusion blind how he truly feels: a widow whose ring rusted on his finger, a widow who has had to watch death and disaster at his own feet again and again, and a widow who cannot keep his husband at his side.

He is selfishness incarnate, his sin of loving a feral war machine who grew too much heart his folly and his crime.Were he to wish upon himself a kind of altruism that his people assumed of him, perhaps the scars lacerated into the very earth they stand on would not have sunk into the graves of rebels X sought to hide from the eyes ever watching him.

“Last systems check. Calibrators online and functioning. No data signals from Dark Elf. Looks to be a go.”

“Proceed,” X commands with a weariness that leaks into his voice, causing it to crack and to static along the edges. The scientists pause to regard X with sympathy—no, _pity_ —and it nearly upheaves what little resides in the leader of the last testament to man and reploid's resilience.

Do they not see the blood that stains his hands? Do they not see the shadows clinging to his back to utter psalms of vehemence at his once great cause? Do they not realize he is _tired,_ so damn tired of it all, and if it he is meant to endlessly up the pieces of his heart and soul at every heartbreak, there will always less and less of himself left?

“… Proceeding with shutdown. Physical functions such as joint movement will move into safe mode, then cognitive systems will follow. We will be unable to reverse—.”

“This is for the best,” and X graces the world with one final smile, one that never reaches his dull eyes, as a numbness begins at his legs then trickles up his torso and neck. There is a warning signal that taps into his internal systems, the finality he has been scouring for since the doors of Zero's own chamber shut on his fists.

With a sigh of a prayer, he accepts the terminal shutdown, and all goes white snow then black into blessed silence.


	5. Lay This Body Down ['Southern Gothic' AU]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And the hole is shallow where I must lay.  
> The hole is shallow, but that's okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take October flair, a haunting podcast based in the Appalachia, and my love for the Southern gothic; slap it all together with some flowery verbosity and headaches, and you get this. Happy early Hallow's Eve? :)

The summer air is as muggy as it is unforgiving, dampness laying over the leaves and the bark of the woods like a veil of sinner’s plight. Having grown in these mountains his since the day of his birth, Zed Wilson— and every poor soul that has had to break back in the fields when the coal miner union strikes get bad— knows nighttime as a placid savior from the grueling sunshine that beads sweat down brows and backs of man and woman just trying to scrape it right by.

Well, if placid were more like a noose around a con man’s neck, suffocating and tight, but a breeze shifts the weeds and makes that old red rocking chair squeak, and tonight should be as peaceful as it gets here in small place living. Stars should hang bright, fairy lights gleaming about the big dark blue of a cloudless night sky and crickets should chirp their lunar waltz on beams of stardust and silver shine, but there ain’t one thing peaceful about it.

At first, when the moon was new just a few nights ago when the whispers started, he thought it might be his mama might be coming up the trail to come home. But, his mama is dead, at rest with all her Christian rites, buried six feet down on hallowed ground just down the trail at the lone cemetery of their dilapidated once-town. Maybe it was more of hope-against-hope as the shack was sure solitary and he missed ham hock and biscuits after church on Sundays, but she never walked up onto the porch and Zed knew deep down her presence was more chamomile than sulfur. 

He would have gotten the salt out had he the thought, another one of his poor mother's worrisome habits, surely not his own, from those nights when daddy wouldn’t come home and she was too fretful to use the shotgun. Why, he recalls it fondly like the dusts of yesteryear, peeking out from over his sheets while his mother sat by bedside with his hand cradled in hers while the listless moans wailed from down the trail. Even there on that porch step, his skin warms over as though her hand catches his again, needle-pricked thumb tracing constellations over his worn knuckles.

_ “They’re old, baby boy, mean as hornets and deceivin' like carpetbaggers. Don't go with them. Don't you ever go with them.” _

Then, Zed thought, then it was his daddy, and his fingers tighten around that old shotgun like a priest would a Bible at such affront. His daddy, if he even cared to grace that asshole with such familiarity, was hopefully strewn about the county in pieces for the crows to peck, peck, peck at after he had a tussle with some men that did not take too kindly to being swindled. They, of course, were a  _ reputable _ folk, just businessmen that marketed women and moonshine just because the market was fair. Free country and all.

Nevertheless, bastard had it coming. All bad bastards do, the kind that raises their hand to their wives and their children like it’s their God-given right, taking that little verse of ‘spare the rod’ far too flung across any matter of reasoning. Still, he wishes even then that he had seen it; bones smashed into pieces like the amber whiskey bottles thrown at kitchen walls and skin putrid and bruised like his own when infection took at a nasty wound.

Well, none of this poor young man’s business at the end of it since he was too young to be a part of such foolery and too old not to hold his own. So, at the ripe age of seventeen, he inherited the full head of property of this shack that held within its walls temper tantrums and nails of iron— again, his mama’s insistence, to not keep a man out, but to keep  _ them _ away.

And  _ shhhh _ they seem to say, their whispers dancing like the flame-tinted leaves of autumn that will surely come when the apples are ripe and ghosts walk the trails like they’re due homecoming. The man shudders, blue gaze staring right at the wooded barrier of his land from his patched-together porch, work-worn hands holding that shotgun like a cross and holy water. The wind picks up again, and that damn rocking chair rocks and rocks with cricketed protest as the knobs of his spine straighten, ice water creep trailing right down to the porch boards.

_ 'Come here…' _

Were Zed a softer man, not hardened by the murmuring shadows of mine shafts and liver-frying whiskey by the swallow alone under starlight, he might would have trembled for that voice is sweet like springtime honeysuckle and— it just feels of green, splendorous green that blooms forth buds of peonies and marigolds when the winter frost thaws and the crick starts flowing in its bends and curves again.

Yet, it is not all grandeur of the flora; along the edges is something far less soothing and far more insidious, rapturous blues of darker tints swirling like pipe smoke in his ears. The voice is hazy in his head, sifting about like dust clouds in a forgotten attic and he nearly forgets to be dreading. However, the moon is still waxing and it is too dark and too quiet for the chirping songs of night birds and crickets have gone frightfully mute. 

Something is watching him, too close and too far, and what he would give to have their old black dog by his side, dumb loveable mutt as he was, but buried in a hole dug by his own hands. Right then, Zed Wilson missed that jubilant gait and those friendly hazel eyes like something terrible, that good loyal dog who might have trembled a smidge at the sight of a bobcat, but damn if he could not smell out the whims more putrid. Never failed to watch his old pupils sharpen with canine instinct at the scent of something less of man and of animal and something more, ah,  _ more. _

Amongst the silence that tolls funeral march in his skull, Zed thinks of the herbs his mama once grew, thinks of sage and rosemary drying on the little pantry door away from daddy's knowing. He thinks of milky smoke from smoldering sage, thinks of the salve she would smear across his scraped knees and swollen chin before turning back to dinner cooking away on the stove top. Then, he ponders how she would always pull him back away from the windows every crescent moon when he was a young boy, drawn to see the acre sprawled out beneath a dim silver slant hanging by a fishing line low in the sky. 

He swears to it, swears on her grave and on her pearls he stashed in her jewelry box that still sits on the dresser, he can feel her palm, softened with age and loss of will, pet over his wheat-colored tresses. “ _Go inside,_ ” is an imploring croon that speaks of lullabies and nursery rhymes that have catalyzed into a reality that is too close to home, “ _go inside and lock the door._ ”

There are, after all, things in these woods that he cannot even fathom into existence. 

But, by God, there is a fire lit holy and prideful in his breast to stay put right there, to hope and to see what thing is creeping and crawling through the roots and the trunks of the oak and the spruce. Hell, he needs to see it, to bear it down with his own eyes, to see whatever dark thing is festering about and strewing about the carcasses of poor crows that did nothing to nobody. The black feathers are that trail like candy to the edge is enough, but the display of split ribs and matted black has at least stopped turning his stomach. 

Though, the worst had been one lonesome blue jay that had crunched beneath his boot— a shock of a sound that rattled his bones nearly out of his skin— that had been perfectly placed before his front door, neck snapped and twisted, cyan and cream plumage near damn sheared off that little body. 

A gift of sorts, some macabre attempt at courting, some humorous jest that rattled two coins in his head while the bile churned in the pit of his belly. Beady still drift in and out of his dreams like a spectre of mist and of spider web and he admits reluctantly that he has not felt right since. 

So, he buried it, same as he has done for the crows, next to the grave of his own black dog. Hell, he even prayed over the avians just for the fact that no animal deserved whatever sacrilegious display this tainted thing intended to present. He prayed timid and unsure since praying did not come all natural to him, but the inclination was all the same. After all, God had made the land and the sky and the flora and the fauna, his mama had said, and if God was good enough for man, well, God was good enough to accept wayward prayers for the unfortunate souls of ink black and haint blue birds. 

The woods seem to tremble then in some act of aggression for his attention wandering off, and this last Wilson man's nerves fray ropelike at the edges. He could hardly account of being afraid; why no, his bright blues have started down brutes three measures his size and have watched upon the grizzlies wade about the gardens beside the shack without fuss. He is not scared of most things that creep in the shades of spruce, but damn if that whisper is not rotten apple sick. 

_ 'Come along,'  _ it sings in tones all masculine and feminine and in between, somehow an amalgamation of bird beasital growl. songbird tune and feral growls that makes Zed crave the weight of hot iron in his palms. He nearly laughs humorless and weary when the liquor-bitter song floats about in the stale hot air for him to ' _ come along, come along, lonely soul. _ '

His boots scuff the steps of the porch and, well, he has had his damn fill, his resolve all tightened up in noose knots and wailing woes as a soldier’s siren calling draws his shoulders proud. Zed is not a scared man, no sir, not any rambling fool that takes a lick lying down like his miserable welp of a father would cause cowardice ran yellow in his blood but, thank God on Highest, not his blood, thick and red and angry that something is out there mocking him. 

But, the voice sighs and shudders, a delighted insidious giggle that leaves his mouth cotton dry and his head mighty achey. God must not be a listening deity sitting up on the heavenly throne this night cause enough of praying should have scared this thing right off. 

Rather, it coos in high squeals and low baritones, reminding the man of solitude of the locusts he has not heard on the land all summer. He has missed their cacophony, their symphony that makes all outsiders lose their ever-loving minds to the treble and the forte of their blistering instruments. 

This sound is down right chilling and snow packs down his back and freezes to each of his vertebrae. Tch, yet let it be known he is  _ not _ scared one damn bit, not one ounce, but his body knows far before his mind the rationale to maintain his own life; this is something that regales in the fear that blooms forth in man's heart—.

_ 'Dearest,'  _ and the dim-toned verdure captivates in some tantalizing crook of an unseen finger to coax him closer to the tree line,  _ 'come along.'  _

If he had nothing any better to say about nothing else, Zed Wilson may have broken down to his knees and begged as there was just the slightest saccharine tone that he knows in glimmering creekside and lazy summer nights in his old truck. He sees the green of fireflies, feels the satin of hands that have never learned the rough handle of axe and shovel, and her name rings in hollow reverie— Irene. 

It has all gone from minor fault to a grand offense to pull apart his brain to find the deepest kept secrets of Irene, the same girl loved a flower like a mother loves a babe. Brilliant irises, vibrant roses, and radiant azaleas all bud forth in cobweb spindles that scratch into the bone of his very spirit yet haunt his joints in door-swing creaks. Hellfire might burn him alive if he does, but his Irene doesn't deserve this, not when she too sleeps eternally beneath the dirt after her frail heart just took out too soon. He still sees her corpse in her threadbare casket at old Thomas' funeral home, the promise to marry her a silver band on her finger glittering faintly like starlight. 

(For some reason, he cannot shake the memory of old Thomas standing there at Irene’s graveside, his blues shaded with the exhausting murk of age, as he looked out into the groves to watch something from afar. The old man then rolled up his sleeves and took up the splintered shovel with a nod to Zed and Irene’s twin brother to bid it time to spread the red clay over her vault.)

Irene was a memory that had faded with time, all withered roses dried in the pages of a family Bible, but she aches all the same, stings hornet sharp seven times over, and well... 

This damnable thing spawned from the gullet of some hellmouth has some nerve. 

Bless him, save him, let the ghost of Irene walk with him, but this is a spit in his face and he has a mean right hook and a barrel of a shot, so he does what any work-brickle, strong-backed man would do: he stomps right up to the giants sewn with leaf and bark by Nature herself to stare right down whatever in God’s green earth this is. 

Rightly, Zed should just mosey right back to the shack, lock the door and stuff his head under a pillow as something akin to bilgewater bubbles up his throat at the sight of what he thinks he perceives and yet does not, but it has his gaze all the same. 

_ It _ — whatever it is— lacking corpulent form, coiling languid about in oily smoke curls about the trunks of the oaks. There is hardly light to tell otherwise if there is a serpentine body, hardly any indication that this beast is likened to man or not, but what chills his courage to the utter quick right there and then are suddenly two glowing orbs the shade of Irene’s green. 

Oh, his Irene, and his heart surges ragged against a tide of regrets because it hurts hot and biting because it is like his late love herself cupped fireflies into Mason jars and trapped them in those headlights that stare him into stillness. He blinks, trying to quell the rib-clenching grip of guilt that would just lay him defenseless, but when he opens his blues that were drug from the beaches of the panhandle, dread trickles down cold in his spine. 

It is there in all its loathsome providence, sightless yet seeing, breathing yet not. 

It stands there, this pretty naked thing that is not pretty at all, sunken in flesh and mud-matted curls that were perhaps once the color of roasted chestnuts. Were the moon casting her silver veil through the turns and bustles of the leaves, an eerie foresight tells the Wilson boy that this haint would be translucent, milky white with the blood gone, all gone, as though dripped dry of it. Even then, every limb and curve seems of an avian sorr as if this decrepit sight had sneaked out of its cage of iron to tread upon these valleys with a bile-sick pulchritude that entices as much as it revolts. 

The eyes, though, the eyes such a particular shade of green that bristles like nettles yet glistens like grassy morning dew ensnares him by the neck so fierce it might as well have snapped it clean.

Strange as it is, regardless of the pinpricks of goosebumps on every inch of his own skin, regardless of the ways his stomach twists into topsy-turvy splits, regardless of the gun that now falls to the roots of the trees to be a lost treasure for some wayward stranger, his soul is a weary swallow of rainwater that simply speaks of feeling just  _ sorry _ for the thing. It might be his own salvation that teeters into the hotter coals of damnation, but he merely desires to raise his hand, catch that flayed cheek along the touch of his knuckles just to show some compassion. 

After all, did mama not tell him even the worst of the hard-lived, dirt-smeared folk deserved some mercies too? 

And, God, does this pretty beast read minds? It regards him as if it does, a chuckle chuffing from between split lips that sounds like a thousand bumblebees caught in a nest of bramble. It smiles tired, no, ravenous, but lovely, some despicable kind of beauty that juxtaposes Irene’s serene grin, the same that never failed to make him think how Heaven could never compare to her in bridal white. 

No, this spectre is turpentine sour and dirt bitter, a harvest of cotton waterlogged in the dreary precipice of autumn's decay. Rattlesnake fierce yet cotton mouth endearing, everything smells and looks of acrid danger, of poison drip and fang steadfast. What brings it all together, what pounds away the nervous signals that rear in man's instincts to run, is the jagged laceration of an x carved right over where this sallow mockery of an angel's heart  _ should _ be, telling all the man needs to know. 

This poor birdie of the umbra is not a natural kind of existence; no, rather it was made with ill wills and malice floating about the innards because anything before has been scrapped out and replaced with murkier, less Godly arrangements. 

Yet it walks this earth but not of this plane, and realization blooms forth a delight that wraps his crimson thread around the spool of its finger as revelation is alight in the blues of a prey beckoned home. This prey, this Wilson boy who took so much red-blistered pride in having a bucket full of smartness compared to his wonderfully departed daddy, is lost in those firefly irises. 

The lion of a man that has known fight and grit is now prey and he is helpless, so helpless. 

_ 'Come,'  _ and though it speaks those lips do not move, its hand delicate and weathered rising in offering, ' _ come home, little lion man.' _

And how laughable it is to hear his mama’s endearment creep in corners of that voice amongst the buzz saw sighs and crick babble coos. He smells dried peonies and rotting flesh intertwining through the air, tumbling as lovers in chokeholds do when dominance is well sought, and it makes his soul scream for mercy, grant mercy foul thing, give him temperance and salvation. Nah, guide his young soul chained by the mire of tar coal and joint aches to a hastened close for death will be slow and aggravating otherwise. Whether it be webs of plague splintering his chest or the limestone break upon his head, he begs silently to the greens of that gaze that he is saved. 

Lo, man is fickle and man is weak as loneliness is a mistress of woeful spite, and a wicked little smile that spells of all the deeds done to the oaks and the soil of these mountains is sated and wide when Zed Wilson takes its offering and walks into the shade of the woods that loomed over his lands for centuries when he was merely a thought in the back of God's All-knowing mind. 

And, O Hosanna they might say in the church that Sunday, O Hosanna, He on High, what did the greens and the shades do to that scunnered Wilson boy who strapped up his boots and took up coal pick and lantern? Yes, O Lord, what did he do— did he decide that the death was sweeter quick, that black lung was too slow a draw of the soul when he took of the earth her darker wares? Or, was he ensnared by some pretty thing full of teeth and hunger on a too hot night, another victim of some haunt that was enchanted by the wheat of his hair and the depthless skies of his eyes? 

  
  


And rumors will fade into ash and into dust with cigarette flare, the old ladies of the church clutching to the elbows of their husbands while chiding the grandchildren not to go too far into the weeds, not to go too far into the woods near the crick. Be home before sundown, they chide the little ones, be home ‘cause there is beast that looms and skulks for little souls to find, same as that poor Wilson boy might have found that humid, near moonless night. It must have laid his body down, but they need to believe it, these naive children of field and reed. Yet, the kids will scoff it off, but only one will learn of it, a whippersnapper of a redhead stopped dead on the trail when he meets two corpses walking by dusky twilight: one that dances of fireflies and another that burns of lantern flame. 

—

_ “If I become Maverick, you have to take care of me.”  _

It echoes in promises unkept, standing quiet upon the graves of rebels and fellows alike, but it lingers there in all his joints and all his combines. He could have let the memory go, let it remain fragmented in static snow and blaring feedback, but he is tired. How he can be so tired after sleeping so long is a quandary in its own affair, yet here he is, exhausted like he has built his own coffin in a dream of fever. 

Everything is wrong, wrong and wronger still, the pieces all aligned in the worst of patterns that Zero can detect even with his database scrambling for some sense of basic foundation. No matter the result, it feels ominous, shade and venom and little bugs he cannot quite recall the genus of, but there before him lies X-- no, not X, but rather this copy so sublimely it cannot possibly reason with the folly of its reign. 

It would have an inkling of humor had this not been the precipice of his endeavors to keep Ciel and her Resistance safe and thriving to watch this mere child with a makeshift crown formed of fool’s gold sitting right upon his head. Zero would laugh, or would if the desire of his programming would bubble forth some senseless sound, yet does not as the gesture is meaningless, sour on his tongue. 

“ _ I was supposed to be… a hero, _ ” cracks out on electric sparks as the copy is just shattered and dismembered into pieces scattered across the floor, all by Zero’s doing at X’s command. After all, was Zero not built for war, built for the militant execution of command given by his superior officer, built to be concise and unyielding? His sole objective is to do nothing more than to complete missions as they are directed, just as he has eradicated this fabricated usurper with his own might.

Besides, the copy’s eyes were reason alone to pull saber from sheath and go in for the kill; everything is still blaring warning signal despite this clone hardly registering to combat mode. The wrong color, the wrong everything, devoid of all the green and the love and all the exhaustion X carried within the cusp of his gaze. Glimpses were far more painful, little attempts at lessening the weight of the slab on his shoulders, the same the former Hunter carries on his back. 

—

When Zero reboots his standard systems with a grated whirl of his gears, sand and demolished Pantheons are the only miserable company in his wake other than the white glint of Neo Arcadia in the distance. It would be his luck that he would stumble into desolate wasteland encircling the borders of New Arcadia where the ivory tower that beheld Area X still thrives as a bastion of all of X's failings and successes. Citrus tastes acid and bitter on his tongue, the warbot's fists clenching despite his victory this day. After all, the metropolis remains a glistening chess piece on the board of this war, a testament to X's everlasting legacy of strength and resilience while oil boils in his veins. 

Then a glimpse of verdant catches his scour and lo and behold the blessed foliage of Yggdrasil, in all its yew tree splendor, sways a solemn farewell to the rebel with a tormented cause. The greens dance wistful, conveying some idea of missing his presence within the borderline. The goodbye feels like a welcome and something made of iron nail rips into him like memoriam. 

Fields of clover and tar mottled in oil stain reverie as he tries to remember why X was so precious to him, begs to recall cloudy azure and soft emeralds that thinly shroud what lies beyond his reach.

Albeit his composure emboldens and his processors quiet, what cycles over and over from beginning to end is X, ragged and remise. It is always X, some profound would-be deity of the humans raised to the heavens to condemn and to waiver in accordance to their demands. Yet, it is an X that might never breathe again, the one that was his partner, his better half, his compass of morality until Zero dared to compose of a peace enacted strictly by sword and fist. That is until he wizened with his years and came to an utterly disastrous conclusion that he himself was the sole bearer of penance for these plethora of wars. 

It matters not one shil anymore as that clone of X's composed of naivety and authority now rests in dust and molten scrap. Whatever happens from then is a novel endeavor, some new goal to set forth down his path. A task appearing insurmountable yet a task he will conquer with diligence and whatever the hell else the crimson warbot will have to drag out of his repertoire. 

But, the crimson stops in its wake, optics closing tight as some unseen hand tugs into his chest. Hues of rainbow brilliant dazzle as starlight behind his lids with a promise unpretentious. Forgiveness is hard earned, though the idea seems foreign in concept now, it will be better fought for than to never abide it at all. 

So, he steps, then steps again, and again until nothing but his footprints remain only to be scattered into the winds of sandstorm. In a time not come he might thank whomever bears the prayers of existence inorganic that he fell in a desert and not some hellaciously humid forest, but soon all he will know is a scream in his ears of shredding metal and forgotten promises laid to shallow rest. 


	6. The Hunt [Viking AU II]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “One prey of your choice. I will even help you steady the arrow—then we may go home.”

Oh, to be on sceptered isle, to be awash with the golden light of dawn who might spread her tendrils like roots into the greens of rolling hill and forest glen alike. What a sight it is, tangerine ablaze along each blade of grass and each leaf of tree while birds flit about the morning sunshine to conduct all their earthly dealings. 

Very little of the emerald flora is found where he stands then, lush yet  dismal gaze fretting over  a damn colorless  boun t hat greets him once he peaks  over  an steep incline t owards the valley that sweeps down towards a n  ice-webbed shoreline.  Despite the winters spent here away from a homeland of greenery abound, a grief still hangs low and throbbing between his ribs and leaves the former West-Saxon wearier than before this morning's rise. 

He takes a step, hears a sharp crunch of winter's burden under his boots, and  Aelfward hates this all the more. Regardless of how many furs he bundles into, every chill brushes along him, leaving countless shivers to draw down his spine. The very nature of this season leaves an acrid taste of bitterness along the tip of his tongue and some times he looks to the cloudless skies to beg for an answer as to why he was even there. He is hardly crafted for such an adverse terrain and hardly willing to withstand the frigid helms outside of the village to endure it, so why must he be subjected to this monstrosity of icicle white? 

The answer comes as it always does when doubt harbors in his soul with  ashened sails and salt-soured oars. A brute, no,  _ his _ brute, swaggers to his side, this terror of a man too good with the handle of a blade and also too good of the heart to even be of this realm. This man, with crow's feet warming his eyes and a touch as gentle as lamb's virgin wool, it is no wonder why  this smaller man had consented to being hoisted into the  longship eons ago. 

Regardless the amorous plight that sings lustful tune in his ears,  Aelfward huffs because damn it all, it is still too cold to be away from the fortress of their farmhouse. “Why was it insisted that I be dragged out from by the fire? I was making salve.” 

The laugh that answers him is perhaps fool-hardy, but nevertheless, it sparks an ember or three that melts at the ice threatening to fracture his bones. Sigfrid has always been peculiar in thought, not allowing his darling gem to expend his time or energy upon certain endeavors, but hunting was suddenly not one of the forbidden things in their lives. 

“We need the meat a nd I am not willing to slaughter one of our stock when the land provides.” 

Irony is lost on the healer who once hailed from the munificent soils of Wessex; they had stored and dried plenty of vegetables and meats for the winter. He recalls the feat himself as Sigfrid hauled deer and boar alike to the butcher table to make quick yet diligent work on the poor creatures that had met the line of his shot. Regrettably, the healer has never been much on the process which just makes this entire hike into the frigid wilderness just a strange occurrence. After all, his oaf of a lover has always escorted him back to the house so he not bear witness to the acts of man wanting food for the winter.

Thankful as he is for stew meat with root vegetables, he is just not honed by the bite of snow and the teeth of steel as this raider is. He is, well —.

“Thinking too much again, my blue jay,” and then the warrior of Northern shores comes to take his chin so that their eyes might meet. It is a brilliance of blues upon greens, a fractal as splendid  as ocean crests lapping at the roots of luscious ash trees, but the mirth along  Sigfrid's eyes is what draws him to coo softly. 

“Whatever will you do with me?” he offers with a hint of coy lilt upon the currents of his tone, “me with all my thinking?” 

Another bark of a low and rumbling laugh resounds in defiance to the mountain wind, and despite the drop in temperature, the beast man seems hardly perturbed though his braids whip about his jaw. Instead,  Aelfward cannot deny how ardently his impulses take hold and he within seconds is he burrowed against  Sigfrid's chest, shivering away against the bear furs. 

“You need to learn to hunt, my  stubborn bird.” 

“I detest that claim as I am too cold to even move.” 

A leather clad hand comes to cup his head, fingers playing with the curls that spill  from his hood ,  “there may come a day when I cannot hunt for you.” 

A scoff erupts like lava from his throat, though fear might seize his voice otherwise, and it is all he can do not to hold this man tighter. He has clung to these anxieties of could-bes for more seasons than he can fathom, these moth wing cruces that heavy his mouth to suffocate all coherence and all confidence to be found in his lover. Had the sails not always broken the horizon line come summer’s autumnal fade? Had the longships not always carried Sigfrid homeacross churning gray seas to the shorelines of their village? Had he not always kept his promise to come back in spite of the fresh scars that mottled his rough, sea-salt skin that foretold of triumph over Death's sickle and veil? 

S igrid, who boasted of feats impossible to man’s earthly limitations which indeed included the excessive partaking of mead, had kept his vow to his little bird as assuredly as  their betrothal .  His endeavors remarkable to make it so alleviates the misery of lonely nights that might otherwise fester with haunting premonitions of sea storms and raiding rivals intent on cutting down a golden soul such as the blue-eyed beast who embraces him so tenderly. 

But, as with most aspects of mortal life, the time comes for someone to move. 

“ Aelfward ,” Sigfrid relents while his hand drifts down his back in a brush of comfort, “you cannot hide from the hunt forever.” 

The healer pouts, positively and undeniably pouts at the comment, wholly hesitant to leave the cozy folds of iron-corded arms and chestnut furs. It would only be fair to stay right there in the confines of warmth— after all, he was dragged out here, definitely dragged, literally thrown over a broad shoulder to be carried from the crackling heat of their hearth’s fire to the poor mare of choice for today’s ventures , or whatever this endeavor was the brute decided to undertake this day. He will be as terse as he pleases, petulance defining each syllable of his utter disdain for being out in the  glacial b reeze of snowcapped hills while the ragged faces of old mountains  peer ceaselessly across the horizons. 

Sigfrid exhales a hot breath of admonishment and  Aelfward is more than certain there is a quirk of an unimpressed gaze settled at the crown of his curls. “Tell me little, little bird, why are you so stubborn today?” 

“Because I think even my blood is frozen,” but what lies in truth is a veil of something more, something that clutches along his chest and floats about in perfect pontificating weaves.  It is a quarrelsome reminder, a dank and ever-present  that conflicts the healer from  Wessex in threads of  jubilant  hopes and  threatening realities as some day , loneliness might  cool the bed.

Yet there he is, the raider of lands and houses of faiths, all blood and sinew that thrives and is  _ warm  _ as though the frigid bite of death draws seemingly so far though its epitaph calls so near. Sigfrid has allowed a moment of pause to potentially ponder over an answer befitting such a slight ruse, but when his lips press against the curls of chestnut brown,  Aelfward’s firm resolve cracks a little. 

And weathered palms roughened by sword hilt and axe throat dig into the burrow of furs and wools that hide his small yet resilient bird from the isles, and greens as resplendent as auroras  enrapture his heart once more. 

Or, well,  Aelfward hopes that is true as evident by the handsome grin that reveals some falsehood of benign , yet playful  manner. 

“One prey of your choice. I will even help you steady the arrow—then we may go home.” 

A deal; a paltry offering which does nothing to finally huddle him away in the heated hideaway of their abode miles back towards the village that sits sturdy at this northern inlet, but it will do. Rather, it will have to do, if those irises of ice and tease have any say in the matter. 

So, this former resident of  Wessex nods in a bare consent to the price of being warm and safe within four walls of oak of straw, finally relenting from siphoning off body heat from his lover, “one. Just one.” 

With a bark of laughter that thrums with holly leaves and campfire soot, Sigfrid shakes his head though his eyes wrinkle with admonished delight. “Yes, my gem, just one... though I hope you pick a fine thing. I would like to make you a new fur shawl.” 

Ah, there  again is that snap of oak wood as the embers of something  akin to fever as blossoms crimson across his cheek though the whiplash of wintry zephyrs might allude to simple chaffed skin. It is a near desire that the Norseman assumes it so as the healer, heralded gem from the emerald isles beheld by scepter and crown, has a pride  rich and intoxicating like the honeyed mead that  brews  in the barrels  along side the longhouse. 

A puzzle at times, this one from  Wessex , but the game is deemed worthy if the  sapphiric twinkle of mischief is any tell-all. It only serves to redden his heart and still his breath once more, and  Aelfward is certain all this hesitating will now preclude any progress. 

“Give me the damn bow,” is demanded with a hand held out, “and do watch: I intend to make quick work of this.” 

Though the  hunting bow is given with a nary of fuss, what swirls in the beatific creases of the towering beast’s visage is a sneaky glint of perhaps possessing a small cusp of knowledge the other will never guess upon before it is too late. The chuckle is a giveaway though, a light shed upon the shadows of a teasing raider who has hewn foe with metal and shield until the mud and  the blood washed away all semblance of humanity—until he softened at sight of such a bird he stole away in the middle of straw fire and clashing blade. 

It is only fitting all the more when Sigfrid inches away to allow  Aelfward all the space to snap away an arrow onto their unsuspecting target this day only to raise his hands in mock defeat, “entertain me, blue jay.” 

A scoff, one of many that huffs from his lips, and simply jerks an arrow from the quiver strapped to the brute’s belt. To hell with it all if it meant getting to sit before a rumbling flame with stew in the pot. To hell with this coldness that seems to stick to his bones and his joints and makes life all the more, well, more to deal with. It even makes the act of scouring the shades of dormant trees and still luscious pines just abysmally dismal, yet there he is, amateur hunter barely scrapping together a plan on the whim. 

It is quiet, placid in the tendrils of a soothing enchantment that might glisten amongst this winter  hellscape into something idyllic and lovely, yet there in the expanse of what might would be infinitesimal white breaks a movement of sienna. Yes, there it is, a target with a prowess of blistering seasons caught in the in the scope of  a  grass blade gaze: a stag with antlers large and shoulders proud and what other poor creature would be finer to present to his lover in some means to prove that he is perfectly capable of the ordeal of fending for oneself? 

“There,” he points with a tip of the bow towards the clearing this stag has forlornly chosen as its last living sight, “the stag.”

Sigfrid does a peculiar motion, one that  Aelfward has etched into his mind with soot and Frazier fir needles, rubbing his beard with his fingers while in soundless cerebration. Raider that he is, impulsive to a brutish finesse and abrupt with exclamation as he could be, his lover seems enrapt with some hindrance that might would change the course of this deal would it stand. Yet, it comes not to pass as there is a hum and a click of teeth, “I think I would have rather you picked a doe or perhaps even a fox, but you have chosen your prize. We will feast for many nights if your shot hits.” 

_ And it will _ goes unsaid with a flight of splendor emerald cutting over to a boastful  man of sea salt and iron smite before  once again assessing the breadth of the stag who seems ill-fated to be stewed with root vegetables and broth that very night. 

Majestic would be mediocre to suggest of such a beast, but magnificently comprised of every tool nature had at the helm of her hearth beguiled the senses far more. Antlers proudly sweep towards the heavens while hooves dig into the snow to leave its mark upon the landscape. It is prideful of the years of smashing the head of his sharp crown against another stag’s mighty throes and it holds a power within each knob and each joint of its frame. 

There is a tartness settling bitter at the healer’s throat as he peers on, but the life on the hard of the wilds only ever prominently of survival. Meat is sustenance, fur is warmth, and bones will make the seers rattle fortunes with smooth practice... even if  Aelfward is never taken into the magical folds of their soothsay. But, regardless of the spoils, the act must always first be to take of nature’s menagerie with profound respect of her roaming creatures. 

The snow’s chill through his breeches as he kneels to steady his frame  while t he chills sweep dagger-sharp as the sun slowly sets from its zenith in the blue expanse. Better hurry on, he chides to himself with a mental swat along his resolve, or else they will be here well into the  frost-laden  night waiting for another chance for their deal to be met. The stag seems none the wiser, idling about  throughout the grove in some happenstance of life and it makes this just a smidge relieving. 

His breath soon falls into a rhythm, a grueling inhale then steady exhale in time with each hoof mark buried into the white of it all. It is all he can do to watch and perfect a moment for a strike that would pierce the thick meat and muscle of the stag to catch a vein or even its heart, yet his fingers still quake as his soul bats about his quarrelsome conscience—which is yelling forth some grand sanctity of  life in this place where survival hardly gives two hoots about one’s feelings. 

Granted,  Aelfward could stay perched there for the rest of his days and never snap the bow. He could watch nature bask in providence and never grasp the fleshing of his arrow. He could breathe and think upon all those darker thoughts of death and sea tide and firestorm that parade through his nightmares in the cusp of night’s cradle. The images are fresh, fractal visions of a boat overflowing with flowers resplendent until flames consume the final voyage of his raiding man and it breaks his heart over and over until he can bleed no more. 

Yet… and yet, his man is there, still thrumming with the water of life, still warm with blood flow and vein pulse as his broad chest presses against  Aelfward's back. Suddenly, this is no more a moment of a hunt; it is now another game of their more intimate strides. 

“You are hesitating,” comes low and husky along the shell of his ear as lips and teeth worry at his sparsely bared neck , “and our dinner will prance away.” 

“It certainly will  if your purpose is to provide a distraction …” but hands far larger, the same hands that have tied ship knot and raised oar handle over decades, takes his smaller ones with a motion so delicate, the palpitations of his heart flutter into misstep.  Damn this brute. Damn him. Damn his handsome grin and his gentle touch ,  damn his eyes that reflect the pools of his soul and — .

“Darling,” the healer sighs quietly into the spaces found only between the drifts of falling snowflakes, “do you want me to hunt or do you wish for me to lay with you here… in the cold? It’s damned cold.” 

Sigfrid sighs a particularly sheepish grunt while his palms sneak down to cup the tender flesh of thighs through wool breeches. He is a caught fiend, playing docile as some conveyance of ploy his lover is not meant to surmise from, yet there is a glint of mischief in those endless blues. “You have not even raised the damn bow.”

And then hands take his own, fingers curling around the grip of yew lovingly carved with runes for luck and battle rear to  align the shot. Sure enough, an arrow lays along his hold, and the string is pulled taut as they move together to take their prize for the day. 

“Breathe with me. In… then out…” Sigfrid's voice, while rough as oak and sweet like honey, keeps him steady in the stormy winds of his own mind, parting the clouds and currents to calm the hurricanes that threaten Aelfward’sfoundation. They inhale, slow and meaningful and _together_ ; then, they exhale, a unison usually found in the twilight hours when the fire’s coals still fester with lofty heat. The string grows tauter and tauter still and the stag raises its head for one last look towards the hillside that might beholden upon it a predator who would bound it into the ether of the cosmos. 

“ _ Let go.” _

A snap of string and a fleeting whistle of fletching seem to conduct a pause of the world around them. The very pulse of the earth hitches, throbs and shudders then stills, and it even becomes apparent that the universe has stopped in peer into the most mundane moment such as a hunt found in the frost lands of the North. Then, as time’s mighty hand commands, the shift comes and with it drops the great animal to the cold, cold ground with nothing louder than a thump. 

The pulse dissipates and weakens,  Sigfrid’s hands more firm intent while  Aelfward trembles just so in his grip. An increment of time’s haggard string weaves through the tapestry of fate before the raider bares all his teeth in a grin brimming with a pride that glows like sunshine. “My love,” roughly warms across the healer’s ear, “may the halls of the  Aesir sing of your praise when I am sitting at the  Allfather’s table.” 

“... I killed a poor, defenseless deer, not one of those berserk bastards, you simpleminded lion,”  Aelfward huffs in a squirming reprimand and he feels quite justified when those blues that tell of glories of sea storms and flame light roll skyward. He has not uttered a lie, rather, he has abated upon his shoulders the resolve that hunting for food and clothing is hardly a feat as manically fantastical as those Sigfrid regales during feasts in the longhouse where the mead loosens his tongue and roasted meat slows his regard.

Yet, despite the differences found in their achievements, the Norseman holds his lover with a fondness that would thaw any heart found in an urn of sea glass down at the bottom of an ice-capped ocean. Astounding how this warrior still bemuses him, this enigma of a man who should have been nothing less of rapturously inclined to satiate the thirsts and hungers of his craven appetites. Instead, he is there knelt upon the snow with a wayward find from the sceptered isles, nearly giddy at said find’s first successful hunt. 

Aelfward should have given up ages ago on pulling apart the layers of his lover’s soul as the truth might be better kept away behind the ember-licked ice—after all, mystery,  _ no _ , ignorance is perhaps human’s most blissful of states. But, in the cacophony of the void of his thoughts, the same that parades about with horns blared of horrific existential crises and terrible things that could or could not come, there is a silence of reverie that soothes the rapturous clamor as he smiles. 

Let him stay blissfully unaware; let him bask in the amber glow of this man he loves as fierce as the cloud most assuredly love the sky. 

A kiss at the pale bared patch of his throat comes abruptly and before the brunet can assuage what has happened,  Sigfried has risen to his full height only to help his darling stand right up. “Come on then, my feisty blue jay—I must be sure the skalds see your fine prize when we pass  through to the farm! Oh, how they will weave tales that you have mastered this cruel and white North!” 

And, of course, that is exactly what comes to pass, this lion of a brute hardly able to keep his brags close to this chest as he bolsters up the stag when they journey through their village towards home. The story is flourished, blooming into a near saga of galloping horse trot and pulsing races across valleys blanketed with snow, but  Aelfward never corrects or admonishes his lover. He lets each word of a grandiose lie leave the Norseman’s lips and leaves it right at that. 

Later on, when the sun has curled up into the dark furs of her bed and the moon is swollen high into the night sky, Sigfrid will press their foreheads together in the thrums of their afterglow while  Aelfward’s fingers tiredly braid blond tresses back into some semblance of order. He sighs, adoring through the quakes that still wrack his bones, while his lips try to search for whatever skin he might could kiss. 

“Are you happy?”  the  beast e xhales with a tomb of fretfu l what-ifs h idden in the  rattles of his tone a nd such inquiry draws the healer’s fingers to hesitate in their work.  Eyes  of  speculating flora regard each strand of woven gold  with far more attention that a handsome face awash with some emotion that has never creased those brows prior. 

Then, as though bubbling from a tide pool bursting with life marine,  Aelfward chuckles and shoos away the hissing woes that chortle misgivings in his ear. After all, this poor man of his has yet to cease to amaze. 

“And what occurs if I tell you that I am, brave and noble  _ vikingr _ ?” because there is naught to be said when there is not one drop of doubt to twist and to perverse how he truly feels which is, of course, a jubilant  gleam within the core of his chest. 

A pause, pursed and  tense, then a grin, shit eating and subliminal, “that you speaking in my tongue  might,  hm , raise my mast again?”

Whatever attempt to convey the shadows creeping and staining the filigree woodwork of their souls ebbs away with the resonance of an exhausted groan and a boisterous laugh. The former Saxon heralding from the hills of  Wessex loses all his haughty composure only after hands tickle along his ribs and two lovers fall into the intertwines of limbs. 

—

Snowfall in Abel City is not as common as the urban populous would prefer. The proximity to the coast lines a few hours away (by MHHQ-issued ride chaser, of course) prevents such a seasonal phenomena occurring more often which bemoans child and meteorologist alike. Attempts have been made time and again by the multitudes to affix upon mother nature some collar and chain to manipulate her into providing whatever weather was deemed ‘perfect’ for the sake of the human citizens, but nature is as unkind as she is breathtaking.

It is by her hand that she deems who receives the gift of her winte r’s shawl, so when ever the cool cotton drifts float down from the heavens though,  it causes a sensation of wonderment despite the rushing tempo of city life.  There is an essence of pause,  a  siren’s call with v isions  meant to en snare and enrapture the senses  even  with only a few  wayward flakes

Zero finds the sight particularly worthy this nigh t if only for the sake of predicting near future scenarios , p e rked away from his intent towards Central Command in which his presence is essential in relieving the day shift Units from their duties. Though such responsibilities bear important theatrics all a part of the bureaucracy necessary to gear the Hunters into a finely-tuned operation, but briefings and regiments are cast aside as the  warbot stands transfixed, optics blue whirring as he attempts to count each snowflake and analyze the brittle beauty found in the unique composition of ice interlacing ice. 

Distantly, there is the crackle of fire that resounds in a muddled quandary of his circuits before t a song of an arrow true whips him into some vestige of a memory that seems to be his own and yet strange all the more. Try as he might to grasp the moment into his proverbial hands, it fades away as wondrously as it emerged, melting into a void of static noise and murmuring passers-by. 

Though, what is perhaps the worst of offenses this night is when someone sidles up within his proximity and not once does a warning signal blare off at the intrusion. 

“Pretty, isn’t it?” and by the voice alone, sweet and mulled with  figurative  spice, Zero’s proximity warnings are appeased after a nasty, throttling wake up, the fangs of his combat modes barely gnawing at itself before he turns to regard X with all the due attention he deserves.  No, comes that split-second  rejoin, what is pretty is the blue light of LED screens and overhead lights cascading over X like a veil, making each part of perfectly bent azure armor  glimmer with enticement.

Words twist and contort into something far different when Zero speaks. 

“I am not sure  ‘ pretty ’ is an optimal definition for a hindrance,” the red Hunter proffers with an agitated tilt of his head as being caught in an act of presumably fatal vulnerability sets off a tick in his servers. 

What responds is the lightest of laughs, a singsong that melts the frost that trails along Zero’s core and soothes the beast of oil and shrapnel that lies in ever-so-hungry wait. X is a delight, too much of one, as found in the curves of a kind smile that would smite the unappeasable man down to his very last atom. “You’re only saying that because—hold on, ahem—the ride chasers do not function at expected operation during snowfall.” 

As likely a lie as Zero will allow; he shrugs and lets the truth slide off his shoulders and into nonexisten ce.  Really, he cannot  permit his own glitches to convey his weak points and he should be wiser after all these years of activation. 

X is right though… ride chasers are somehow inferior modes of transportation when snows dusts over the streets of the metropolis. 

“Reasonable retort. It may be you are finally learning proper maintenance and preparation is necessary when the weather is uncooperative,” Zero offers with a bit of a sly side eye to his partner who rolls his eyes towards the sky light. It is playful as they almost somehow are more and more these days, finding themselves entrapped in some teetering dance that could singe their circuits into  smithereens.

Humor aside, there is an underlying grace of movement when X smiles again  and the world is colored in an ethereal sheen, glistening light fairy  lights swaying with holly branches in a synchronicity Zero might covet just a bit.  X is comprised of parts and wiring near the same as himself, but the  warbot wonders what celestial  sentience weaves into what makes this would-be peacemaker. 

But the assessment is fleeting as those lush green optics gaze about the skyline speckled with winter’s lovely aesthetic to partake in  an idyllic scene harkens for hot cocoa and wool mittens. The sentiment just reveals how far into this ‘humanization’ X has accomplished with his crimson-clad partner. While this would have been embarrassing for Zero years past, he is instead humbled that he can piece together softer definitions that adequately define X and the world he admires. 

Then, the buzzer erupts and the calamity crashes through the corridors of Headquarters like trumpets of brazened war. Whatever quiet found in the crevices of time they take for each other is torn into a bone-aching resign that, as always, the job beckons.

“Time for a hunt?” Zero offers as he  turns about face towards the doors of Central Command. X is right at his side, a hollowness present as it always is when he staring down the revelation that his fantasies of exalted peace are yet pushed further down the ever-winding  briar  road  intent on cutting him down with its thorns. 

“Time for a hunt,” he echoes though with a silver resilience that rings profound enough to placate the worries that trample hoof prints about in the void where the warbot's heart should be. 

At  least , it does for now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant for this to be posted during the December holidays and life said no-- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla took care of that which is what inspired another piece for this particular AU.


End file.
